Remember Those Funny Movies...

When I was growing up, I had a brother who was ten years older than me, so I feel that I was probably exposed to a lot of stuff at a very early age. I remember watching MTV in the third grade and I also remember watching all of the popular R-rated movies of the ‘90s when I was still in 4^th grade. My roommate on the other hand didn’t have the same experience. Recently, when we were going through funny movies we had seen, I discovered he had never seen popular teen movies, such as, American Pie, Euro Trip, and Anchorman. After I heard this, I immediately thought that it was my responsibility to expose him to every bit of the movie pop culture that he missed when he was growing up.

            Today, I saw that Euro Trip was on the movie channel, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to show my roommate one of the great movies from our middle school days. When I was thirteen, I thought the movie was hilarious; after watching it now, I wonder why I thought it was so funny. I guess you could say that I realized that what you find funny could change over time. When I was younger, slapstick comedy seemed hilarious and now I think that political satire is the best thing since sliced bread.  I realized that if my sense of human can change, I wonder what else has changed? Living with someone else can make you reflect how much you’ve changed as a person over time. Like that older brother or sister in your life that would keep you in check, a roommate can help you self-evaluate and get a better image of who you are as you mature in life at college. Sometimes the best image of yourself is hearing how you relate to other people’s lives, and the impact you can make on them. 

March Madness

As most of you could tell from class, one of my favorite times of the year is March. There’s nothing particularly interesting about March except for one thing; March Madness! The only way I can describe how awesome it is would be that if the Goddess of basketball and Santa Claus had a child, it would be the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament. I was so excited for the Divisional Tournaments to end so that the Bracket for the tournament to come out. My roommate on the other hand didn’t share my excitement. I printed off a few copies for myself to fill out immediately and I even did the good roommate thing and printed off a copy for him to fill out. As I spent the next two hours filling out brackets, my roommate’s just sat there on his desk, without even a pencil scratch on it.

            At first I was puzzled, but then I thought that maybe he didn’t have an adequate pencil, or maybe he wanted to get some divine help with his bracket by praying about it for a while, but this was not the case. When I asked him, if he had selected the Sweet Sixteen (the last sixteen teams left in the tournament) yet, and he responded with, “Ah, I’ll get around to it eventually.” What?!?! I wasn’t going to accept that my roommate wasn’t feeling the March Madness, so all I talked about for the next forty minutes was college basketball. I had to convert him, so that he could feel the excitement of the big dance. After much talk and debate about teams, I finally got him excited about the tournament. I got him to fill out his bracket and with a little luck, hopefully he will become a fanatic March Madness fan like I am in the future.

      When I was about twelve years old, my aunt tried to get me to watch the show Survivor with her. I watched the show maybe two more times, but then got bored with the show, which seemed to just document a bunch of people suffering in the jungle, and then forgot about it forever. Survivor use to be one of the most watched shows on television, but as of recently it has fallen out of the spotlight. If you told my roommate that, he would accuse you of treason. Survivor is my roommate’s favorite television show of all time. He has watched every episode at least three times, which is very impressive considering there are over twenty seasons. He is also Facebook friends with multiple cast members from the show and can recite to you a plethora of facts from the show.

      When Survivor premiered its new season in the fall, Matt had mentioned that he was going to be watching the show religiously, but there was one problem; he was scheduled to work during the show’s airing time every week. He mentioned that he would just have to watch it on the Internet later. I thought nothing of his comment, so on the premiere night of Survivor, I went to bed at ten o’clock hoping to get a great night’s sleep before I had to wake-up early the next morning. At’ around 3:30 in the morning, I woke up to clapping and cheers of glee. Apparently, my roommate had stayed up until 3:00 in the morning so that he could watch his favorite television show as soon as possible. Some people might think that he is insane, but I guess you could also see him as one of the most motivated people in the world. The largest lesson I have learned this far from college is to never believe that everyone will do the same thing that you would do in the situation. If it were me, I probably would have waited till the next afternoon or sometime the next week to watch the episode, but my roommate is a completely different person with a whole different frame of mind on life. To him, survivor is entertainment. To me, 10:00 means bed time.